He met her in a bar. He took her home. They had sex, and she stayed the night. It was no big deal.
In the morning, she got up and made them breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon. He didn’t really like his eggs scrambled, but it had been a nice gesture, and so he didn’t say anything. Besides, he knew, she’d be gone after breakfast and that would be that.
So it was no big deal. He would eat the eggs, drink his coffee, ponder the bacon, and go off to work.
* * *
Her name was Margaret. She had small but perky breasts, the sort he really liked. He had small hands, for a male, and big breasts reminded him of what he thought of as a personal inadequacy.
She was thin, but not too much so. Her black hair was in an overly appropriate pageboy. The hairdo spoke volumes about her personality, more than even the breasts did.
She was a stereotype, locked into a personality because of social expectations.
She was an acrobat, and that interested him more. She liked to be on top. She especially liked his recliner, shimmied on top of him with her knees held in place by the faux leather upholstery. They didn’t even really need to move that much; just the rocking of the chair alone was enough to make her scream.
Having sex in that position reminded him of a lapdance, except that he was naked too. He wondered if she was a stripper, since she seemed so comfortable in that position, but he didn’t dare suggest it.
He just nuzzled his nose between those petite breasts and let the chair do all the work.
* * *
His name was Stan. That was an unusual name, she figured, for the sort of fellow he was. Stans, by her estimation, were blue collar types, plumbers and used car salesmen. This Stan wasn’t like that at all.
She’d been drawn to him by his eyes. She had a fetish for blue eyes, something she’d readily admit. Out of her five long-term boyfriends and her twenty-three lovers, all but three of them had had blue eyes.
He made twenty-four, or would it be six? She hadn’t yet decided whether she was going to seduce his heart as well as his cock.
He had nice hair, too, a Fabio-esque ash blond that curled down to his shoulders. She had never been one to swoon over Fabio’s arrogantly chiseled looks, but his hair was divine, and Stan’s was an excellent match.
In the main, he was an adequate lover. She’d had better, but then, she’d had worse. Most importantly, he enjoyed going down on her, and as untalented as the rest of his body seemed to be, his tongue excelled in all aspects.
He had a passivity which allowed her tigress to come out in full force.
* * *
They watched each other over breakfast, wondering what the other one was thinking.
He was nearly dressed, albeit disheveled. He didn’t like mornings, but waking up spooned around an arousing waif was at least a welcome break.
He’d fantasized about taking her again, in that position, and that fantasy had lulled him back to sleep. By the time he woke up again, she was in the kitchen, cooking.
She was naked. She seemed to like being naked; as soon as they’d gotten back to his place, hardly before he’d even had the chance to take off his shoes and coat, she’d stripped down to her panties.
She’d met his bemused look with an innocent smile. "Clothing can be so restrictive," had been her excuse.
"Does this mean you want to sleep with me?" he’d asked in response.
"No, coming back here means I want to sleep with you." She’d winked. "Stripping down means I don’t like clothing."
He’d raised an eyebrow. "Not much for small talk, are you?"
She’d shrugged and spun in a circle on the ball of her foot. "Bars are for small talk. Apartments are for sex."
* * *
"How are the eggs?" Margaret asked, sipping coffee out of an oversized mug and watching him with dangerously green eyes.
"They’re all right," Stan shrugged. "It’s good just to have a hot breakfast."
A look of concern passed over her face. "You don’t like them."
He shook his head and tried to look reassuring. "No, they’re fine. Better than what I usually have."
"Which is?"
He looked guiltily down at his bacon. "Pop-tarts and Coke."
She laughed gently and leaned back in her seat. "Those thing will stunt your growth."
He shrugged. "A bit late now, I’m done growing."
She raised an eyebrow. "Are you? We’ll see about that."
Stan felt her foot make its way up his calf and then down his inseam, and he discovered that he wasn’t, in fact, done growing.
* * *
They exchanged phone numbers, almost out of social obligation or habit. They didn’t call each other. Margaret’s assessment was that Stan was too conservative. Stan’s assessment was that Margaret was too voracious for him to satisfy.
All the same, when they saw each other at the bar a week later, they exchanged pleasantries. Some other guy was chatting her up, so Stan just waved and passed her by. She smiled and waved back, then went back to seductively probing the other man’s psyche.
* * *
"Some men, I swear." Margaret slipped onto the stool next to Stan. He’d been sitting alone, watching the band. They were playing some old 70s classic or other.
"Pardon me?" he shouted over the music.
Margaret shrugged. "Just complaining about one of your species."
"Ah," was the response. "So what happened?"
"He wanted to ‘try me out’ in the bathroom. Can you believe it? The bathroom?"
He smirked and shook his head. "Maybe you think about sex too much."
She spun playfully on the stool. "Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t. Why didn’t you call?"
He turned towards the bar. "What are you drinking?"
She shrugged. "Just Coke. I’m not much of a drinker." She slipped off the stool and leaned into his chest. "You didn’t answer the question. Why didn’t you call me?"
"It’s the 90s. Why didn’t you call me?"
She pouted and slipped back onto the stool. "No fair, I asked you first."
* * *
The next morning, he made a mental note to tell her in a different setting that he didn’t like scrambled eggs. This time she’d added cheese, which was interesting, but the eggs were too fluffy.
She was sitting on the edge of the table, inches away from his breakfast, sipping hot cocoa. She swung her legs as she watched him eating.
"So, how is it?"
He forced a smile as he took another bite. "Interesting," he said through a mouthful of food.
Her brows furrowed up in concern. "You don’t like scrambled eggs, do you?"
He sighed. "No, they’re fine, they’re good. Really."
Satisfied, she beamed and leaned back, setting the mug down next to her. He caught himself staring at her mound and wishing he were eating something other than eggs.
"So why aren’t you eating anything?" he asked.
She smiled coyly. "Because you’re dressed already, silly."
And then she flicked his tie with her toe.
* * *
He called her three days later. He suggested they catch a movie or something.
It was Saturday. She was working that night, she said. Could they make it Sunday?
He wondered aloud where she worked, but she ignored the question.
Sunday it was.
* * *
The movie was some abysmal thing starring George Clooney. Margaret thought Clooney was sexy, the sort of sexy men didn’t seem to understand, but the movie itself was dull and lifeless.
Dinner afterwards was Chinese takeaway. She had fried rice; he had steak kow. They ate on the floor of his apartment using chopsticks.
When Margaret dropped rice on herself, Stan would eat it off of her. Soon it got to the point that she was dropping more food than she was eating, leaning back and looking at him with those hungry, eager eyes.
He delicately placed a pile of rice onto her moundhair and even more delicately ate it away, first using the chopsticks and then eating directly off of her.
The food was forgotten as she lay back and arched into him, letting him finish first the rice, and then her.
* * *
"I’m not feeling good," Stan was saying into the phone, mustering up a voice rich in pain and suffering. "I won’t be coming in to work today."
He hung up and crawled back into bed with Margaret, who released the giggle she’d been suppressing during Stan’s phone call.
* * *
They crawled out of bed a little bit past noon. His stomach was pleading for food, but up until then he’d been ignoring it. Another body part had been pleading louder and more convincingly.
She bounced to the kitchen and shook her head. "You do need a maid, Stan."
"Yeah," he called from the bathroom. "Tell me about it."
"This place is such a mess." She made room on the stove to cook, and poked through the fridge for some food.
"Well," he said from the doorway. "If you’re so concerned, maybe you should move in and clean up after me."
She looked at him, raising a playful eyebrow. "Is that an invitation?"
He looked down at his hands. "I’m not sure. If you want it to be one."
She looked at the stove. "If I want it to be."
Silence set in as they avoided making eye contact with each other.
Finally, Stan said, "What would you do if I told you I was falling in love with you?"
She shook her head slowly. "Run away. Very quickly."
"Ah. In that case, I won’t tell you." He turned to go back to the bedroom.
"In that case, I’ll move in with you."
He looked back at her. She was grinning like an insane imp, and then she set herself to cooking.
* * *
"You know," he said, lingering over a bite of fritatta, "I still don’t know what you do for a living."
"No," she agreed. "You don’t."
He looked at his plate and clucked. She certainly enjoyed scrambling eggs. Oddly enough, though, she never seemed to eat them. She was enjoying a piece of dry wheat toast and a glass of apple juice.
She was crouching on one of the dinette chairs, her legs spread nonchalantly. She seemed indifferent to his eyes’ fixation on her bare nether regions.
He took up another forkful of eggs and tomato. "Care to tell me?"
"Not really." She tried to mask the tension in her voice by feigning a preoccupation with her apple juice, swirling it around in her glass and watching the pulp particles.
He cocked his head to one side. "And why not, if I may ask?"
"Because," she responded firmly, "if you don’t know by now you might not like it."
She hopped down from the chair and padded to the kitchen, splashing out the last of the apple juice and rinsing her glass.
He picked at the fritatta some more before setting his fork down. He leaned back and studied her form. She was an interesting study, standing there naked over a sinkful of dishes, rinsing the one dish that she herself had used. Had he still been painting, he might have considered capturing that moment on canvas: beautiful and innocent, and at the same time seductive.
His interest had been piqued, but he chose not to pursue it further. It wasn’t that important, after all.
After her moments spent in contemplation, she turned back to him and smiled. "So, how are the eggs?"
He nodded. "Good."
She beamed again. "I’m glad. I like to cook."
Margaret sat in her car, staring at the light on in his apartment. Their apartment, now.
It was a little past two in the morning, and she was surprised he was still awake. He must have been waiting up for her.
She’d had a nice night, for a Thursday. She had a few hundred dollars in her pocket. She’d done a few too many dances in the backroom for her taste, but that went with the job.
It wouldn’t be so bad doing those if they at least tipped better.
No matter, she had more than enough for a Thursday. She was tired.
She didn’t know why she was having so much trouble telling Stan. It wasn’t as if she was ashamed. He just seemed different than the others, and she was afraid of losing him.
She watched the light in the window some more, then sighed and went in.
* * *
By the end of the week, he was growing rather weary of scrambled eggs.
To her credit, she was getting rather creative with them — Tabasco, potatoes, onions, cheese, mushrooms — if he had it in his kitchen, she’d found a way to work it in.
All the same, as the days passed, his conviction to tell her about the eggs grew stronger, and his fear of the repercussions grew to match.
The longer he waited to tell her, the more he worried about how hurt she’d be when she finally learned.
* * *
Saturday morning, Stan woke up feeling horny, like he seemed to be doing so much lately, and decided to take advantage of their nestled position to slip inside of her.
She squeaked as she woke up, then began bucking into him.
His lovemaking had improved under her tutelage. He was more spontaneous than he had ever been.
Part of that, of course, was the lack of a condom. She was on the Pill and they were clean and being monogamous.
But there was something about her that was bringing out a part of him that he’d kept caged for so long. She awoke in him a passion that he thought he had left behind in childhood.
She moaned and wrapped her arms back to pull him in closer.
* * *
"I have a confession to make," she said over lunch. The sentence burst forth, as if she had been mulling it over for quite some time.
"Oh?" he asked.
Lunch was pizza. They had called out.
"My mother died when I was twelve. It was very sad, very sudden." She stared at the sauce on the plate in front of her. "My father was working full time. It was hard for us. I tried to do the housework, and I think I did a pretty good job. Mom had fairly traditional views about the woman’s place and the man’s place and all that sort of thing."
Stan nodded silently. "I’m sorry, it must have been difficult."
Margaret started drawing pictures in the tomato sauce. "Yeah. She was bringing me up to be a housewife. Weird, as late as the 70s, but that’s what she’d expected me to be."
Stan continued to listen silently.
She stood up, wiping her finger on a napkin before pacing to the kitchen. "I like to cook, a lot. Really I do. The other housework, I’m not all that keen on, but I like to cook. She was teaching me how to cook."
"How far did you get?" Stan asked, knowing the answer.
"Lesson one: how to scramble an egg." She bit her nail. "But I think you knew that."
"Yeah," Stan said. "I kinda figured that out."
She laughed nervously, looking at the heart she’d drawn in the pizza sauce.
"What would you do if I told you I was falling in love with you?" she asked.
Stan looked at his pizza. He briefly considered using her own response on her, but the mood felt wrong. "I’m not sure," he said quietly.
"I just don’t want to lose you," she said.
"Oh, honey, why would you lose me?" He stood up and wrapped his arms around her.
She shrugged him away. "There are things about me that you don’t know, that you might not like."
"We all have our dark sides," he said supportively.
"Yeah." She thought about it, then turned and wrapped her arms around him. "Yeah, we do."
* * *
"Hey, Stan, whatcha doing tonight?"
It was Bob on the phone. Ever enthusiastic Bob. Stan suspected that there was a factory somewhere that pumped sugar and caffeine into a big machine and churned out Bobs.
"Nothing, Bob, why?"
"Oh, just a couple of us guys are goin’ out to a club, thought you might wanna tag along."
"Where to?" He shook a snowdome on his desk.
"Well, truth is, Mike’s getting married tomorrow. You know Mike, don’t you, Mike Ebersoll, in Human Resources? Well, he was going to try to go and get married without letting anybody in the office know. You know, elope? Well, a little bird told another little bird, and then another, and well, I know it’s short notice, but we thought we’d shanghai him off to a stripclub. Not quite the full Bachelor Party experience, of course, can’t do that with so little time, but we all have to do what we can for us guys, right?"
Stan looked at his watch. It was a little after eight. Margaret had gone two hours ago and wasn’t supposed to be back for another five. Stan had thought about going out, but it was always hard to go out alone on Saturday night.
"Sure, I’ll go out." He didn’t really like Bob and his crew, but stripclubs were always interesting diversions, even with the wrong crowd of guys.
"Great, we’re meeting in the parking lot of Silk Sinsations at nine-thirty. Be there or be square, dude."
And Bob was gone.
* * *
The exchange was short, obvious, and unfortunate.
As Margaret — stage name Melinda — ground her body against some drunken businessman, she fantasized about Stan’s tongue between her legs. Her moans were real, and it had been reflected in the tips she’d been getting that night.
She pressed her breasts against the stranger’s face and imagined it was Stan’s face there, his warm breath on her skin.
She turned and pressed her back against the businessman’s chest, grinding against his stiff erection, dreaming of later that night, doing the same for Stan, fully meaning the passion she was now only fabricating.
It was all she could do not to whisper his name.
The song ended, and she came out of her reverie. She bent to pick up her clothes and wait for the payment.
Her first thought was that she’d imagined too well, since she thought that she saw Stan sitting in the corner, eyes ablaze.
And then she realized it wasn’t an illusion, as he stood and walked out of the club.
* * *
When she came home, the lights were turned off in the apartment. That didn’t surprise her.
The note on the door confused her. It said merely, "I don’t like scrambled eggs."
The door was locked.
She stood in the hallway. She had a key, of course, but she wasn’t sure if she was welcome to come in or not.
She stared down at the note. Had he always hated eggs, she wondered, or was he just saying that now, out of cruelty?
On the drive home, she had toggled between two scenarios. In the first, time had tamed Stan’s rage, and he had grown to accept the situation. In the second, time had inflamed his rage, and he had grown to despise her.
And now, standing in the hallway, she feared the latter.
A single tear rolled down her cheek as she turned and went back to her car. Tomorrow, she’d call to arrange to get her things.
Tonight she had to nurse a broken heart.
* * *
Stan stood in the window of the darkened bedroom, watching the car disappear into the night.
He wasn’t sure where she was staying, but wondered why she had gone.
He had pictured a fight, and an explanation. Or maybe he hadn’t, maybe this is exactly what he knew would happen.
Inside himself, he screamed for her to come back, that they would talk and everything would be all right.
Was he rejecting her or was it just the shock, the shock of finding out that way? Maybe everything had been a lie... maybe she had been stringing him along just like she strung along those customers.
That’s what he feared the most, that the last few weeks had just been an elaborate lap dance so that she could get what she wanted.
But what was it that she had wanted, anyway?
"Come back," he whispered, a tear lingering in his throat but refusing to work its way up to his eye. "Just come back."
* * *
She waited until Monday to get her things, while he was at work. She left the key on the dining room table and let the lock latch behind her.
She had been deluding herself the whole time. He didn’t care, and he had never cared. It was about sex, or satisfying his own infernal needs.
"Love is beautiful until life gets in the way."
That was something she had read somewhere once, not too long after her mother died. She forgot where she’d read it, but the words had stuck in her brain.
Now, as the lock latched behind her, she thought about writing that down, as a note, and leaving it under his door, but she knew that he wouldn’t understand.
So she just walked away. He was just boyfriend number six. Number seven awaited, and then eight, and nine, and so on.
There were other men in the world, after all.
* * *
Work was Hell that week, and he stayed home from the bar that Wednesday, afraid of meeting her, afraid of what he’d say to her.
It had all been an illusion, and he’d been a dumb sucker sap to fall for it. The first time he’d ever been in love. It was no wonder poets went on at such great painful length about it. Love was a joke.
Monday night had been the hardest. He’d sat in the bed, looking at the closet where his clothing was now all shoved to one side.
She had been right, of course. He should have known what she did, and he was just too stupid to see it.
The thing the bothered him, that continued to prey upon him, was the dishonesty. Why hadn’t she told him?
He made himself a plate of scrambled eggs. No tabasco, no cheese, nothing at all, just eggs.
He ate it in memory of love.
* * *
Margaret played the scene over and over in her head.
She opened her eyes from the lapdance, and there was Stan, watching her, enraged. She ran after him, and talked to him, and resolved it then and there.
Or she let it pass, but followed him home, skipping the rest of the night’s work. She’d thought if she let him cool off, things would be fine, but maybe that was wrong. Maybe she should have followed him straight home.
Or she went in late at night, instead of standing in the hallway, and woke him up and confronted him.
Confronted him, yes, that was good. What right did he have to be so judgmental about her life? She wasn’t a hooker, for God’s sake, she was a dancer. No sex, just fantasies. What right did he have to come into the club and watch women, and then walk out because one of the women had been her?
She was better off without him. Judgmental prick.
Still, it hurt inside.
She was scared. He was the first man she’d ever been in love with, despite all of her experience.
She wanted so much to call up and apologize, but she knew that things would never be right again.
It would be weak to make the first move. Very weak.
Better to let him make it.
The phone didn’t ring, though.
* * *
A week passed, and then another. Eventually, Stan started going out again. There were other places to go, after all, he didn’t need to go to the same old place and worry about running into her.
"Hi." The voice on the phone was hesitant.
"Hello?" Margaret wasn’t used to getting calls.
"It’s me. Look... can we meet somewhere?" Stan’s voice was weak. He sounded exhausted.
"Um... sure, I guess so. Why?"
"I miss you." There was a heavy pause. "I want to talk."
"Where?"
"You know where."
"Yeah, I do. Now?"
"Please."
She looked at the clock on the wall, then at her reflection in the mirror, as she put the phone down in its cradle.
A thousand emotions ran through her mind, and a thousand scenarios to match. Her gut ached, but she fought it back.
* * *
"I got your letter," he said, sitting across from her at a table at the bar where they’d met.
It was quiet. The place had only recently opened for the night, and some heavy metal ballad played over the loudspeaker.
She smiled to hide her confusion. "Great." And which letter would that be?
"I guess I screwed up," he said. "A lot. You were the best thing that ever happened to me, and I just fucked it away."
She sat back. If he’d come to her like this at first, she would have run into his arms, but time had made her heart grow cold.
Or maybe time had made her force her heart to grow cold.
"Yeah, you did."
"‘So many relationships end not because of incompatibility but because of failure to communicate. One side has to open up, and maybe then the channel of communication can flow freely and constructively again. Sometimes things just aren’t meant to be, but sometimes it’s just about taking the first step.’"
She watched him in silence, suddenly thinking about the fried rice, and the faux leather recliner, and the kitchen table rocking underneath her and threatening to collapse.
But if it had just been about sex, then why did he matter? Why was she here in the first place, instead of at home doing her make-up for work?
"Beautiful words, but you read them like a script. How long did you have to practice them?" she said bitterly.
"They aren’t my words, they’re yours." Stan pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and put it on the table.
She picked it up and read it. It was typewritten; she never would have typed a letter. But it was signed with her name, in her writing. "I don’t understand."
"You didn’t write this?"
"No." She looked at him suspiciously. Was he really so obsessed that he would fabricate a letter?
Then again, if he loved her so much that he would do this, could she so readily turn him away?
He took the letter back. "Odd. Someone must be interceding."
She shook her head slowly. "Enough illusions. Straight up, did you write the letter?"
Stan looked confused and offended at the accusation. "No."
"Neither did I. Do you love me?"
Stan sat in silence, mulling the question over as he studied her eyes. "Yes," he whispered.
She returned his gaze, before saying softly, "So do I." She sat up straight. "So, who gives a damn about the letter?"
"You’re a stripper." Abruptly, accusatorially.
She froze, at the suddenness of the comment, and looked down. "Yeah, I guess I am."
"Why didn’t you tell me?"
"What? ‘Hey, honey, you know what I do? I take my clothes off and guys pay me to fantasize about fucking me.’"
"It’s a job. If I’d been told, first, I could have braced myself... I just don’t know what’s real anymore now."
She leaned over the table and kissed him. "You know what’s funny?"
Stan looked bemused. "What?"
"After all this time, I still don’t know what you do for a living."
He smirked. "That’s o.k., neither do I."
She laughed gently.
"Can we start over?" he asked.
She shook her head sadly. "No, we can never start over. But we can keep going from where we were."
"Great." He sighed, laughing at himself. "So what would you do if I told you that I was falling in love with you?"
"What? You ain’t done falling yet?"
They laughed together.
"So," she said, "come watch me work tonight. Keep me company."
He thought about it. "Not tonight, I have to think about things," he said at last. "But drop by my place afterwards."
She smiled. "Great. Be horny, I know I will."
* * *
"You seem chipper tonight, Melinda honey." Veronique (real name Veronica) adjusted her bathing suit in the locker room of Silk Sinsations.
"Yeah, I guess I am." She brushed her hair out and poked at her make-up some more.
"Man troubles pretty much over, then?"
"I’d say so," she beamed. "I’m going over to his place after work. We’re talking about getting back together."
"Cool, I’m happy for you, then. It was such a drag seeing you depressed all the time." She kissed Margaret on the cheek. "Well, I’m on stage. I guess he got the letter all right, then."
"Yeah, he did," she replied absently.
"Great." Veronica kissed her on the cheek again and left for the stage.
Margaret finished her make-up and stared at herself in the mirror. She blinked twice and replayed the last few moments of conversation. How did Veronica know about the letter?
But before she had a chance to say anything, Veronica was gone.